


Inkbound

by AmberPenglass



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Snarkfest, infinity war fix it fic, reindeer games, tasertricks - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:22:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmberPenglass/pseuds/AmberPenglass
Summary: ***MAJOR INFINITY WAR SPOILERS AHEAD! FULL SUMMARY INSIDE TO SAVE THE CASUAL EYE FROM SPOILERS!*** Darcy Lewis hasn't been in the thick of things since the wanna-be Tolkein rejects hit London. That's about to change, in great part due to a tattoo she had done at the curiously persuasive behest of a dark haired, green eyed stranger some years ago. A fix-it fic for those of us disappointed and utterly unaccepting of a certain event in the movie.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *** ONE MORE TIME, MAJOR EFFING GIANT SPOILERS AHEAD ***
> 
> Loki's not fond of the idea of dying. After his handful of close calls, he creates an insurance policy for himself in the shape of a bespelled tattoo. A tattoo he manages to convince one Darcy Lewis to acquire. And after his run in with Thanos' asphyxiation fetish, he's rather glad she did.
> 
> Of course, Darcy's not fond of finding out her ink has been hijacked, especially when she's busy trying to deal with the apocalypse. She has better things to focus on than naked psuedo-gods appearing in her shower, like half the world's population poofing to dust- including Jane.

 

She still wasn’t sure why she’d done it. He’d been hot, but not _that_ hot.

Okay, yeah, he had been, but that was beside the point. She wasn’t that gullible, even with a few shots of tequila to blur the boundaries of reason. She usually left poor, drunken life choices to others in her social circle. It made for good entertainment.

Darcy reached a hand back and over, and let the pads of her fingertips brush over the slightly raised lines of ink embedded beneath the skin of her left shoulderblade. At least she’d had to sense to put the tattoo somewhere easily hidden. It was the only thing that had allowed her to dodge her mother’s wrath for so long.

She scratched at the black celtic wolf, with its one green dot for an eye. It had been itching like crazy all morning. No amount of lotion had helped. The area felt warm from her constant attention.

“Leave it alone, you’ll get it infected,” Darcy’s roommate said, swatting at her hand as he passed.

Darcy raised an eyebrow at him as he plopped down onto the couch next to her and reached for the remote.

“It’s over five years old,” she told him. “It’s not going to get infected now, Clarence.”

“Clearly you don’t watch enough gross youtube channels,” he retorted with a lofty sniff. He pointed the remote at the TV. Darcy reached over and snatched it back.

“I’m watching that,” she said.

“What? The news?” Clarence sighed dramatically. “Darling, no one gets their news from actual news channels anymore. Join the current century and be guided by almighty Facebook and Twitter!”

“Shush, you twat,” Darcy said, whacking him on the shoulder with the remote. “Trying to listen, here.” She turned up the volume.

“...most recent attack on the citizens of New York have reduced at least a dozen city blocks to utter rubble. This is especially devastating given how the damage from the previous extraterrestrial invasion had been nearing completion. Now, city officials are estimating the construction to continue on for years to come.” The news anchor, a pretty redhead, shook her head. “Now on to Phil Clerks, out economy specialist, on how the tax-payers will be affected by…”

The audio was laid over a montage of clips. Darcy sat forward to watch. She recognized Ironman, as he faced off with a pair that looked too much like Star Wars extras for Darcy not to snicker. There was someone else she didn’t recognize with Ironman, someone wearing a red cloak that was suspiciously perfect from any and every angle, as if it were molded in place. There was a third, a monk sort of guy. At some point during the montage, a skinny kid -had to be a kid- in a red and blue suit showed up. Darcy wasn’t sure what his deal was, but he could move.

Predictably, anything near them and their scuffle with the Star Wars extras -one of them, the slender one, even seemed to have Jedi tricks- got decimated. She was watching the reason insurance premiums were so high, why Darcy could no longer afford renter’s insurance despite her cushy job.

“Can we change the channel, please?” Clarence asked. His normally languid posture was rigid, and he was staring out their grimy window. Darcy blinked at him, then kicked herself. Her normally happy and flamboyant friend and roommate was pretty good at deflecting his issues with the invasions. At not dwelling on how his significant other had been killed in the attacks.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, sorry. I just like to keep on top of this stuff, you know? For Jane. She’s not as over him as she says she is.”

“Yeah, can we also not talk about your old boss’s freak of a boyfriend?” He snapped.

“A,” Darcy said, trying to keep her tone neutral as she clicked off the television. “Thor isn’t her boyfriend. Not anymore. And B, he’s not a freak.”

Together with Jane, or not, Darcy liked the hammer-wielding moron, always would. Not a lot of guys with -literal- god complexes that could be tased by a college intern then turn around and call her a friend.

“I’m not getting into this again,” he said testily. Darcy held up her hands and stood.

“Allright, this is me getting out of it,” she answered. “Food fixes everything. You want food? I’ll get food.”

She left the cramped living room and ducked into the even more cramped kitchen. A few moments later, she heard the front door open and shut. She peeked out around the wall partitioning the kitchen from the living room, and sighed, then shrugged. He’d come back when he cooled down, and want to pretend nothing had happened.

All in all, he was actually the least temperamental roommate she’d had in awhile. Least he had a reason to be occasionally, randomly moody.

As Darcy was heating up some leftover lo mein, her phone buzzed. She grabbed it, thinking Lawrence had locked himself out of their building. Instead, Jane’s name and number lit up the screen. Darcy raised an eyebrow, and answered.

“You should just text me like everyone else does nowadays,” she said in lieu of a hello. “Actually calling is so last century.”

“The program you wrote me isn’t working,” Jane said, sounding both desperate and impatient. Their relationship had been on the fritz since Darcy had given her loving, honest, sans-sugar opinion on her breakup with her electric boytoy.

“Gotta narrow that one down, Janey,” Darcy replied, already heading to her room with her carton of noodles.

“The one that gets me access to satellites I’m not even supposed to know about.”

“Ah, that program. Kay, gimme a sec, I’ve got to log in. You’ve got the computer-hijacking program on?” Darcy plopped down on her bed, set her noodles on her nightstand, and pulled her laptop closer.

“Yes.” Jane gave Darcy the code that would allow Darcy’s laptop to gain access to Jane’s computer and control it remotely. It was highly convenient, and highly illegal. Whatever was going on had to be big in order for Jane to be first asking Darcy for help, and willing to give her civilian friend access to her definitely not civilian friendly harddrive.

“Thought you finished the project you needed this for,” Dary told her as she logged and got to work.

“I did. I need it for something else.” Some of Jane’s unshakable enthusiasm for science finally broke through, and she added, “Something I’m not sure I believe, Darcy.”

“Well maybe I can believe it for you,” Darcy said. “Try me.”

“There’s another invasion going on,” Jane blurted, sounded both horrified and excited.

“Where?” Darcy asked, intrigued despite herself. “I was just watching the news.”

“Wakanda,” Jane said. “It just started. Wakanda doesn’t have many news outlets for the rest of the world yet.”

“That why you want the satellite?”

Silence met her question. Darcy’s fingers slowed. She glanced at her phone, checking to see if they’d been disconnected. The call was still live. She reached over and switched it to video as well as audio. She saw Jane’s tired, drawn expression.

“Janey?”

“I need to know,” Jane said, looking embarrassed and sounding...in pain.

In a flash, Darcy understood. If there was a massive invasion, again, there was a good chance Jane’s ex thunder buddy would be there. Darcy sighed. Her tattoo was still itching, worse than ever, but she ignored it, and kept working at the program.

When it was up again, she watched with Jane as a mad man with poor taste in jewelry took on the Avengers.

And won.

“Darcy…?”

Darcy would not have thought anything in the world could have torn her from what she was watching, like a fly on a vaulted ceiling might watch a disastrous dance, but Jane’s voice did it. Her eyes snapped to her phone, still with the vidcall going, and she felt her heart stop.

Jane was holding up a hand. A hand that was, slowly, morphing into what looked like a cloud of dusty butterflies, butterflies that then disintegrated into fine particles, then vanished altogether. Like a gentle ripple effect, it spread from her hand, to her arm, to her shoulder.

Jane looked at Darcy through the phone.

“Oh,” was all she said.

Then she was gone. The phone fell from fingers that no longer existed. The call was dropped.

Darcy stared at her laptop screen.

Numb, knowing her reaction was delayed, knowing she would pay for keeping it delayed, Darcy rose from the bed and padded to her window, and the fire escape just outside it. She pushed open the window, and leaned out. Her window was over a busy street, and she began to register what had not before; the screams, the shouts, the shrill shrieks of twisting metal, the screeches of skidding tires. All up and down the street, Darcy could see people, at least one in three, puffing away in flurries of ash.

Nothing was left. No clothes, no hair, no shoes. Not even teeth fillings, as far as Darcy could see.

Darcy shut her eyes. She breathed. Then, she did what she always did when the world went to hell- she opened her mouth to snark.

Nothing came out.

Darcy hung her head, felt the breeze toy with her hair. Wondered how many people-particles were in the wind. If she had the remains of her neighbors in her hair now.

The macabre thought was waylaid by a renewed intensity of the itching on her shoulder. She slapped her right hand up and over her shoulder, nails brandished to attack the irritation like she couldn’t attack what had stolen her friend. She felt skin give way, and sticky warmth seep under her fingernails.

She didn’t feel it. She pulled her hand back to look at it, and grimaced.

“Pull yourself together, Lewis,” she said. “This isn’t your first end of the world.”

But it was her first time seeing her friend and her neighbors puff to nothingness. First time seeing the Avengers defeated.

She clenched her bloodied fingers into a fist, then turned, leaned against the wall by the window, and slid down it. To top everything off, even breaking her own skin hadn’t stopped that damn itching-

Heat, heat unlike anything she’d ever felt, unlike a fever, unlike a sunburn, or a too-hot bath, seared through her. She gasped, choked, and leaned away from the wall. Her bloodied hand clasped at her shoulder, fingertips at the edges of the ragged scratches she’d given herself.

“What the f-” She cut herself off with another gasp as another wave of heat washed over her. She felt at her forehead, and smeared away new perspiration. She didn’t just _feel_ hot; she _was_ hot, hot enough to sweat.

Darcy forced herself to her feet and stumbled to the bathroom she shared with Lawrence. She careened into a wall, and knocked her glasses off her face. Half blind, feeling as if she had lost a real life game of the floor is lava, she groped for the shower handle and turned it all the way to ‘C,’ then flung herself underneath the icy blast.

Darcy’s body locked up with the shock. She couldn’t breathe. The heat built, and built, until it felt like an entire hive of stinging, itching ants had been shoved under her shoulder blade. She bit back a scream.

Then, all at once, the itching vanished. The heat began to recede.

Darcy shivered. She managed to stand, and brace one hand against the wall beneath the shower head. She bowed her head under the spray, and tried to catch her breath, alternating between shivers and worrisome stillness. She felt a tingle begin to spread from the tattoo, like someone smearing a giant glob of icyhot.

Afraid of what she might feel, or find, Darcy once again reached her right hand up and over to feel at the ink.

Her hand met resistance.

More specifically, it met another hand.

Darcy went still. She heard a breath. Not her own. A deep, ragged, choking breath.

A male breath.

“There is not someone in the shower with me,” Darcy mumbled. “Half the world’s population did not poof into dust. Thor did not lose to the Purple People Eater. _There is not someone behind me._ ”

“While I cannot speak to the poofing and the purple eaters of people, I can confirm that there is, indeed, someone in the shower behind you.” Despite everything, there was humor in the voice.

Darcy shut her eyes. A small part of her latched onto this current insanity; it meant she didn’t have to think about watching Jane-

“You’re naked, aren’t you.”

“I did not work clothing into the cloning spell, so yes.”

“Wonderful.”

“Most women tend to agree.”

In any other circumstances, Darcy would have wanted to laugh. It was something she would have said.

She reached down, and turned off the water. She reached over and shoved aside the shower curtain that hadn’t ever been fully closed to begin with.

At that precise moment, Lawrence decided to let her know he had returned. Her roommate burst into the bathroom, eyes wide, a tear in his shirt.

“Darcy! Have you looked outside? There’s people-” He blinked at her, at whoever was behind her, still in the shower. With a forced, broken laugh he said, “That’s one way to handle the end of the world. You forgot to get naked, too, though, Darc. That part is kind of important.”

He was breathing fast as he talked, practically hyperventilating.

Darcy had this unique ability to, when others around her were about to snap, suddenly find herself devoid of any of her own previous impending meltdowns. It was part of what had helped her help Jane back in New Mexico, and again in London. Jane had always been on the verge of a meltdown. Darcy had compensated.

It also helped that she was desperate for distractions. Naked Shower Man had distracted her from Jane. Now Lawrence would distract her from Naked Shower Man.

“Breathe,” she told him. “I’m not having end of the world shower sex.”

“Oh. Okay, good. I was about to be hurt I wasn’t invited.”

“I promise if I ever have an apocalypse threesome, you’ll be the first I call,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder as she guided him from the bathroom. “Go pour us drinks, ok? Then we’ll figure out what we’re gonna do.”

“Drinks. Alcohol. Yes. Got it.” He meandered down the hall, and Darcy shut the bathroom door.

“Well handled, all considered,” said Naked Shower Man, who was still behind her and whom she’d very deliberately not yet looked at.

“Please don’t take offense, but I really hoping I’m going to turn around, and you’re not going to be there.”

“If it helps, I wish I had the power to oblige.”

Darcy turned around.

At least he had caught up the edge of the shower curtain, and was hiding the important bits from casual glance. She eyed the long fingers that hers had bumped into, eyed the arm, shoulder, and head attached to those fingers. She blinked at him, took a half step back as she realized she recognized him. Recognized him _twice_.

“The glamour should be wearing off right about now,” he said, lips quirking in mirthless amusement. “Please try not to scream. These ears are new and sensitive.”

“You...you tricked me!”

“I’ve tricked quite a lot of people, in quite a lot of ways.” he said, and this time there was a bit of a sigh in his voice. Just a hair. Subtle enough Darcy doubted she’d heard it. The rest of his tone was all smirk.

Darcy turned, and tugged down the strap of sodden tank, prominently and pointedly displaying the tattoo. “I remember you! From London! You talked me into getting a tattoo with you, and then you bailed soon as mine was done!”

“I’ve wondered, since, if agreeing to get permanent markings with strange men you just met in a pub is something you did often,” he replied amiable enough to almost make the bathroom a sensible location to have their conversation.

“And I’ve wondered, _since_ , if I was drugged,” she snapped back. “I’d never wanted a tattoo before that night.”

“Chemical coercion is for the feeble minded.”

Darcy laughed outright. “Oh please. What do you think you’re doing when you do those things you did with...with those things…” she gestured towards his hands, his eyes, and realized in doing so she gestured to all of him. His light smirk deepened into a wolfish grin. “That’s _chemical coercion_ on its basest level, buddy.”

Darcy wasn’t letting herself think too hard on the other place she knew him from. She hadn’t recognized him when she’d met him in that aforementioned pub in London, but now she did, easily. His reference of a glamour was the only explanation for why she hadn’t recognized the original Invader of New York when he’d slid into the booth next to her, all those years ago. His face had been all over every news station, magazine, newspaper, and social media blog for months at that point.

Lawrence returned, balancing three drinks in his hands. One was in collectible sippy cup, without a lid, with Thor’s face festooned along it side. She took that one and one of the drinks in an actual glass tumbler.

“I could really use one of those,” her shower guest said. “Midgardian swill or no.”

“No booze for you until you chuck up some answers,” Darcy told him. She set the Thor cup down on the counter, and took a long sip of her own. Bourbon, no ice, no water, no mixer. It was the good stuff, too. She felt a warmth, a much more welcome kind of warmth than the hell of a few minutes ago, suffuse her from the inside out.

“If you think my nudity keeps me where I stand now, you are in for a rather unpleasant revelation.”

“Oh I think it’d be a rather pleasant revelation,” Lawrence said, somewhat absently. Darcy looked at him. His eyes were unfocused, his lips slack in betwen sips. In shock, going on autopilot with the faux flirting.

“Hey,” she said to her friend. “How about you finish that, and see if you can find our guest some clothes?”

Lawrence needed no more prompting. He slammed back the rest of his drink, and turned to follow her suggestion.

“Talk,” she commanded as soon as he was gone.

“The drink first, woman.”

Darcy picked up the Thor cup, and tossed back the single shot inside. Then she raised what was left of her drink, and downed that too.

“What drink?” she said.

“That was incredibly mature,” he said, a sarcastic heat to his words.

“Says the guy who threw a temper tantrum that leveled a city because his brother had a toy he wanted,” Darcy replied with coolness to match.

Of all responses she might have expected, the wistful smile and sudden glance to the side that he showed was not among them.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Darcy said. “Or I swear to God - a real one- I will-”

“You will what, Darcy Lewis?” Her Naked Shower Man interrupted, his voice midnight soft and as patient as a saint.

For once, Darcy had no immediate reply. She set her jaw, and clenched her fists, and tried not to shiver in her wet clothes. She noticed the cold didn’t seem to bother him at all. Well, duh, she supposed.

“That is what I thought,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, this wet, uncomfortable, and rather irate deity in front of you, who is fully capable of turning you into a gnat, _would like a drink_.” With every beat of his demand, he took a step. The first took him over the bathtub’s wall. The second took him beyond the coverage of the shower curtain, which he dropped. The third brought him to stand directly in front of her, looking down from his notable height advantage.

Darcy felt her heart thud in her chest. Adrenaline surged, and she fought to keep her breathing under control.

“The wet, uncomfortable, rather irate _douche nozzle_ in front of me admitted he couldn’t poof himself elsewhere right now, so probably also can't whip up his own clothes,” she said, voice low and even. “And is instead going to be wearing borrowed hand me downs from the roommate of his brother’s ex-girlfriend’s mortal former assistant. So. Loki. God of Mischief and chemical coercion, if you can’t convince the atoms in this room to make simple cotton, I doubt you’ve got the juice to play god with my mass and condense my atoms into the world’s heaviest bug.”

She took a step of her own, and while he didn’t back away, he had the grace to raise an eyebrow in surprise. Their proximity was reminding her, uncomfortably, of both his state of undress and of another night where they’d been unwisely close, a night in a pub with dim lights and heady smoke.

“Now tell me what the fuck is going on, and I won’t tell Lawrence to get you his Hulk PJs for you to wear.”

For just an instance -just the briefest of moments- she thought she saw something behind the green eyes boring down into hers, something like a wince. Something...something rather like pain.

She backed off, as much for her sanity as her safety. Lacking the juice to perform polymorphing tricks aside, she was still pretty sure he’d be strong enough to do some damage, if he wanted.

Loki raised a hand, and Darcy was proud of herself for not dancing away. Not that she could have gone far- the door was practically at her back. All he did, though, was brush his fingers against the back of her left shoulder, where the tattoo had been burning minutes before.

“The last time my death was an issue, I decided I’d rather not be bothered about it again. We immortals are rather spoiled with having a plentitude of time at our disposal. So, I selected someone I believed near enough my brother and his merry band of misfits to warrant protection should anything threaten them, but far enough away that they were unlikely to be easy collateral damage.”

Darcy blinked up at him. “Dude. Clearly you didn’t get the full debrief of yours truly’s involvement the last two times you were planetside.”

“Regardless, clearly I picked correctly, otherwise neither of us would be here.” His fingers tapped her tattoo. “I placed a portion of myself in the spell I worked into your skin. If I died again, truly died, what was left of me at death would rejoin what I placed here.”

The tapping at her tattoo became a caress. Darcy slapped his hand away. Then, she grasped what he was telling her.

“Wait, you turned me into a _horcrux_?” She slapped at his wet, naked chest. “What the eff, dude? Seriously? What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Many things,” he said promptly, with a surprising amount of humility. “But thankfully, death is not currently one of them.” He reached over to the bathroom counter, and picked up the lidless Thor sippy cup. “Now, about that drink?”


	2. Chapter 2

 

_Five Years Ago_

_Darcy the Intern now had an Intern. She tried not to be as amused by that as she was, but it was hard. Mostly because Ian was just so damn adorable. Not the fuckable kind of adorable, not in her book, but he didn’t know that yet. Darcy had always had issues with her general friendliness and lack of boundaries getting her into trouble. Ian’s misunderstanding of her ‘thank you for saving my life’ kiss being the most recent example._

_Still, she hadn’t wanted to dismiss him out of hand. She wasn’t that kind of bitch. Thus tonight. While Jane worked on getting Eric settled in a long term treatment facility, and also worked on not thinking about how her role in her boyfriend’s brother’s death may or may not affect things between them, Ian had insisted on meeting Darcy at a proper pub, something he had discovered didn’t quite exist in Darcy’s neck of the woods._

_So far, Darcy liked it. The rich wood and leather, the fingerprint-smudged brass everywhere, the smell of smoke and ale and grease and poor decisions permeating the air. She liked it despite beginning to wonder if her new intern had stood her up on their not-date._

_Not for the first time, she glanced at her phone and quirked her overpainted lips (hey, a girl liked to be admired, plans to put out or not). Over an hour late._

_Chickenshit, she thought, not unkindly. She thought about calling him. If he hadn’t been able to work up the courage to come, though, she doubted he’d answer the phone. She moved her fingers to dial Jane, the only other boob-owning person she knew on her current side of the ocean. Before she could hit send, a hand covered hers._

_Darcy jerked away out of reflex. Her free hand came up with a butter knife. The owner of the hand straightened out of the bend he’d gone into to reach over to her. His smile was disarming, as was the casual elegance of the three piece suit and fedora he wore._

_“What the hell, dude?”_

_“I just thought you might want to glance that way, before resorting to your secondary plans for the evening.” Her gestured towards the front of the pub. Darcy twisted on the leather booth seat, and looked. And smiled._

_Ian was there, pacing out front, visible through the small square panes of glass._

_“Idiot,” she said, fondly. Absentmindedly, she added, “Think he’s a virgin?”_

_“I think you are not the first generous woman to whom he has ingratiated himself,” was the smooth reply. Darcy blinked. Then she looked up at him, squinting through long, curled lashes that had taken way too long to do._

_“And I’m thinking it’s time for you to scoot,” she told him firmly. Then she did some scooting of her own, out of the booth. She stood on her two heeled feet and strode towards the door without looking back, heading to an Ian that had just realized he’d been spotted._

_He had a sheepish grin on his face when she was outside with him._

_“Goober,” she told him. “You wanna go somewhere else? Somewhere less-” Intimate? “-fancy?”_

_He looked her up and down, then away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I kept thinking it was worth a try. Then I thought, you’ll go home no matter how great tonight turns out. Then I thought it would be unfair to go through tonight, and then tell you nevermind afterwards. But now-”_

_“Ian,” she said, cutting him off. She tried to keep the annoyance part of the mixed affection and annoyance she felt out of her voice. “It’s ok. I get it. I don’t disagree. You’re cute, you saved my life, you’re crazy smart.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re gonna catch yourself a fox someday, ok?”_

_Ian looked at her, and swallowed. She saw it in his eyes, when he decided, but still didn’t quite move out of the way in time to try to turn the kiss into a brush-on-the-cheek thing. He planted his lips on hers, and tried to do something with them that she thought was supposed to be sensuous, but ended up just awkward._

_After a moment, he pulled away, blushing worse than before._

_“Well, since I’ve not much else of my dignity to lose,” he said after an moment of uncomfortable silence. “Don’t suppose you’d at least want to salvage the evening with a visit to my place?”_

_“I’ll see you Monday, Ian,” Darcy said, in what was her best impression of one of her mother’s polite society voices. Gentle, but firm._

_“Right then,” Ian sighed. He stepped away, gave her a bit of a nod, then turned and walked away._

_Darcy sighed._

_“That was painful.”_

_Darcy groaned._

_“I mean really, really painful.”_

_The groan turned into a little cry of frustration. Darcy turned to face her sleuthy audience. The fedora-wearing man from inside was leaning against the glass front of the pub, beneath the shadow of its swinging sign. She couldn’t quite make out his features, but the tailoring job on his suit told her what she needed to know._

_“Feel free to help a girl out, next time,” she replied glibly. She headed back inside to grab her jacket, pay the bill on the one beer she’d had by waiting, and head the fuck home._

_“I’d rather help a girl out this time,” he said. He’d followed her in. He moved ahead of her, spun on a heel, and came to face her with his hands in his pockets and his face split in a wide, lazy grin. “I hear the solution to things like this involves icecream and cosmetics?”_

_Darcy blinked at him. “Are you offering to do junk food and pedicures with me? Don’t answer that. What you’re describing is for serious break ups only, not dodging a pity date.”_

_She moved around him, and reached for her jacket. He didn’t move to stop her. He did, however, move to grab her jacket before she could. He snapped the garment out, and held it up at the perfect height for her to slip her arms into._

_“Then I hope whatever is the appropriate follow up to ‘dodging a pity date’ is as fun as what I had planned.” He said the words with no guile, no leer. Just a conspiritol smile and one hell of a wink._

_Darcy paused while turning and reaching back one arm to slip into one sleeve. She looked at him over her shoulder, a wary cast to her face. Wary, but also curious. She’d never in her life turned down an interesting time, or not be tempted by her greatest weakness; curiosity._

_“Can you beat sitting in a house not yours watching Doctor Who reruns at midnight on a Friday while your best friend cries over an MIA boy toy?”_

_A choked bit of laughter escaped him. “Undoubtedly,” he promised. She flashed him a grin._

_“Then I’m in.”_

  
_ Now _

In the end, Darcy got Loki the drink. Mostly, she told herself, because she was going to get herself another one, anyway, and her grandmother would have beaten her ass with that wooden spoon that still haunted Darcy’s nightmares if she didn’t get one for her guest, also.

She was sure to bring back the booze in the Thor sippy cup, though.

By the time Darcy returned to the bathroom, Lawrence had brought Loki -God, Darcy wanted to laugh; _Loki was in her bathroom_ \- a pair of designer gym pants and a plain tee. She was oddly disappointed her roommate hadn’t grabbed one of his My Little Pony tees. The memory would have been priceless.

“Allright,” she said, after handing over the refilled cups. She gestured to theirs with hers. “A toast.”

“Pardon?”

“Huh?”

She ignored Loki and Lawrence’s responses, and said, “To surviving yet another apocalypse.” Then she took a healthy swallow of her bourbon. “Well, the beginning of it anyway. Loki, you’ll be oh so thrilled to know-”

When she had taken her generous sip, Lawrence had dropped his cup, pulled something from his pocket, and lunged at Loki.

Quicker than she could follow, Loki moved. He pivoted to one side, while one hand shot out and latched around Lawrence’s right wrist. The palm of his other hand slammed against Lawrence’s throat, fingers curling around the pale column like vices. The whole of her skinny roommate was lifted and slammed against the bathroom doorframe. It had happened so fast, she didn’t so much see each movement as she saw the end position and filled in the blanks.

Darcy saw what was clutched in the hand that Loki had grabbed. A knife. One of those stupid rainbow-color blade ones. She’d bought it for him at a convention after…

After the attack on New York. Where his boyfriend of eight years had been crushed by a downed flying alien jet ski.

She may have had some sort of voodoo on her to hinder her ability to recognize certain super villains, but Lawrence…

“Oh, shit,” she said. Lawrence was choking. Loki was looking at him with mingled confusion, amusement, and annoyance.

“Run, Darcy!” Lawrence choked out. Darcy blinked at him.

Running actually might have been the sane thing to do, come to think of it.

Loki looked over at her, while her roommate turned purple, and arched one eyebrow. “Does he usually give such useless advice?”

Darcy’s heartbeat had shot through the roof. “Depends on the topic. When it comes to the men in my life, yes, yes he does.” She held out the Thor sippy cup. “If you let the poor mortal down, you may have some midgardian swill.”

“Will he try to stab me again?”

“Probably. But you did indirectly kill his boyfriend, so you kind of deserve it.”

Forget the roof. Her pulse was in orbit. Loki’s attention was more fixed on her than it was on the man he was strangling with one hand. She held his gaze, and didn’t do anything pretentious like lift her chin or square her shoulders or flip her hair. She just held herself still.

“Drop the knife, Lawry,” Darcy said, gently as she could. “Please.”

Darcy wasn’t sure if it cooperation or asphyxiation was responsible, but Lawrence’s grip on the knife went lax, and the blade clattered to the floor. Loki kicked it away, then dropped him.

Darcy stepped forward, booze still held out like some sort of sacrificial ‘please don’t kill me’ offering. He took the cup, smirked a bit at the pixelated plastic, and took a drink. While he seemed to be contemplating if it was worth swallowing, Darcy went to Lawrence’s noodle-like form. She checked his pulse. Bruises were already forming on his throat, but his heartbeat was there. He was breathing, too, if in raspy breaths.

“That’s actually not entirely detestable,” her guest said from behind her. “I don’t suppose there’s more?”

Darcy did her best to arrange Lawrence more comfortably, then rose back to her feet to turn and regard the man holding the now empty sippy cup at a jaunty angle, in her direction. She scowled at him, then grabbed it and marched past. She dared a jerk of her head that was meant to indicate he follow; she didn’t want him within eyesight of Lawrence when her roommate woke.

Thankfully, Loki apparently spoke fluent modern body language, and followed her into the narrow confines of the living room. She traded the sippy cup for a glass tumbler, and poured in the rest of the bourbon that was sitting on the bar in the far corner. She wiggled the empty bottle in his direction so he saw that it was the last.

Handing him the full glass Darcy said, “Least you didn’t smash it to the ground and go, ‘ _Anothah_!’”

Loki paused as he took the glass, though it was so brief, Darcy may have imagined it.

“New Mexico, or New York?” he asked, and took a healthy swallow. He kept his gaze on her over the rim of his glass as he drank.

She blinked at him. “Huh?”

“The boy. His lover’s death. New Mexico, or New York?”

“No one actually died in New Mexico,” she told him.

“New York, then.” He glanced out a window. “Is that where I am now?”

“Funny enough, yeah.”

He went towards the window, and Darcy pinched her lips together. It looked like her moments of forgetful respite were about to end.

“What, exactly, is going on, Darcy Lewis?” Loki asked after a moment of looking out. She could remember what he must be seeing- crashed cars, people milling about, screaming. The strange dust motes in the air. People motes. People motes. Sounded like a bad band name. She let out a completely inappropriate giggle.

“Was hoping you could tell me,” she replied when her awkward laugh made him look over at her. “One minute, Jane and I were using a hijacked satellite to watch your brother try to split open this big purple guy with a new axe, the next…” Darcy hesitated. She gestured towards the window. “No more Jane. No more a lot of people.”

Darcy and Loki were silent for a long moment. He tapped one finger against the side of the glass he held. Then, he extended his arm, and offered it to her.

“You look like you need it,” was all he said.

“Says the guy that just came back from the dead via some wierd tattoo voodoo,” she said. But she took the glass. Took a drink, let the burn of it be all she felt for a moment. Tried to let it burn away the memory of seeing Jane fizz away to-

“What is the safest place you can think of, Darcy?” Loki asked her, cutting into her precarious state of mind.

Her eyes snapped open. She handed back the bourbon.

“Probably my dad’s place, upstate. Why?” she asked.

“Because,” he told her. “I am going to redo my ‘voodoo’ spell on your tattoo, then I am going to stash you ‘Upstate’ while I go find my brother.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha! The response! Omg the response! Love you guys too.
> 
> Fair warning, I am completely winging this. Been awhile since I’ve written something without twenty pages of plot notes and bullet points first... We’ll see where this goes!


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